Yeo Yeo-jeong regains the top spot in women's vault at the Asian Games... Gold medal for the first time in 8 years

(Nagoya = Yonhap News) Reporter Jang Hyeon-gu = 'Queen of vault' Yeo Seo-jeong (24, Jecheon City Hall) regained the top spot in women's vault in artistic gymnastics at the Asian Games on the first day of the Chuseok holiday after 8 years.

Yeo Yeo-jeong earned an average of 14.483 points in the first and second rounds in the vault finals of the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games held at the Nagoya General Gymnasium in Aichi Prefecture, Japan on the 24th, taking first place among eight athletes.

This is the 10th gold medal for the Korean team at the Asian Games and the first medal for the Korean gymnastics team.

Yeo Yeo-jeong won her second Asian Games gold medal in eight years since the 2018 Jakarta-Palembang Games.

Yeo Yeo-jeong missed the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games held in 2023 because she was competing at the World Championships, where qualification for the team event at the 2024 Paris Olympics was at stake.

North Korea's Ahn Chang-ok won the silver medal (13.666 points) and China's Du Si-yu won the bronze medal (13.450 points).

As of 7:25 p.m., North Korea had won three gold, silver, and bronze medals.

Yeo Yeo-jeong, who became the first Korean female artistic gymnast to win a bronze medal on the Olympic podium at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, collected two Asian Games gold medals like her father, Yeo Hong-cheol, executive director of the Korean Gymnastics Association, who dominated the era as the original vault emperor.

Director Yeo Hong-cheol won the men's vault title twice in a row at the 1994 Hiroshima Games and the 1998 Bangkok Games. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, he won a silver medal in vault.

As a result, Yeo Hong-cheol and Yeo Yeo-jeong won two gold medals at the Asian Games and also received an Olympic medal, honoring their family for generations.

There was no opponent for Yeo Yeo-jeong, who ranked first in the preliminary round and advanced to the finals.

From the high leap she showed off after landing on the vault, to her mid-air performance, and to her landing, Yeo Yeo-jeong was the only one to surpass her seven competitors with a score of over 14 points.

In the first period, Yeo Yeo-jeong performed a technique with a difficulty level of 5.4 points and received a performance score of 9.066 points, making a fresh start with a total score of 14.466 points.

The technique created by Professor Yeo Hong-cheol was 'Yeo 2' (run vigorously, grab the cutting board with both hands, lift the body into the air, twist it two and a half times, and rotate 900 degrees).

In the second period, even after lowering the skill level to 5.0 points, the performance score was added to 9.100 points, resulting in 14.100 points.

North Korea's Ahn Chang-ok, who won the vault gold medal at the 2022 Hangzhou Games while Yeo Yeo-jeong was missing, was deducted 0.3 points for a big mistake in the second period where his left leg went out of the mat after landing, and eventually won the silver medal with an average of 13.666 points in the first and second periods.